


Watch Me Fall

by nozenfordaddy (fenna_girl)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 21:16:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2124960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenna_girl/pseuds/nozenfordaddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difference between love and desire is just a matter of degrees of something that he refuses to think about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watch Me Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to my betas various and sundry of you - you know who you are; and to [](http://vanessa0504.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://vanessa0504.livejournal.com/)**vanessa0504** for the wonderful art that inspired this.

‘Well I know I make you cry  
And I know sometimes you wanna die  
But do you really feel alive without me?’  
\- Accidental Babies

‘Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.  
From what I've tasted of desire  
I hold with those who favor fire.’  
\- Robert Frost

By the time Cobb came back with Eames, the Chemist and Saito in tow he'd seduced her into his bed; he didn’t try and justify it beyond the fact that she was a pretty girl and it had been too long since he’d had time for an affair. Years possibly. Certainly since before Mal had died. She had been Cobb’s wife but they had all loved her a little, it had been impossible not to, she’d had that way about her. Cobb had simply laid claim first.

Arthur was too methodical to allow that to happen again.

By the time the others rejoined them she was his even if she covered the marks he left on her throat with a multitude of scarves. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that he might be hers in equal measure. That sort of thing was asking for the kind of trouble that he’d seen drive Cobb to the brink and make him contemplate doing the impossible.

“A bit young for you, isn’t she darling?” Eames had taken one look and done the math, cornering the Point Man murmuring quietly to Arthur as they watched her help Yusuf organize his space, laughing with The Chemist over something they couldn’t hear. “She is lovely though. Pert.”

He popped the ‘P’ in the last word, filling it with innuendo and his eyes moved over her slim form in that way Eames had that managed to be assessing and sexual all at once. Arthur had been on the receiving end of that look more than once but this was the first time he wanted to deck the man.

“Very American, rosy cheeks and apple pie and all that. The wholesome ones are always a bit wild in the sack.” Arthur made a sound like a slightly feral growl in his throat but didn’t respond, jaw clenching as he gritted his teeth. Eames just laughed. “Message received love, pity.”

Arthur briefly wondered if he meant that Ariadne was taken, or that he was. With The Forger it was hard to tell.

“If you’re done being a nuisance...” Arthur started, collecting his papers and preparing to send Eames on his way, but his attention was caught by Dom joining Ariadne as she left Yusuf to his work. Her face, almost as expressive as her hands he thought, lit up when he spoke to her, a shaft of light from outside filtering down making her eyes flash and Dom actually smiled. A brief flicker of something other than his usual stone faced expression.

“I don’t believe our fearless leader got your memo darling.” Eames glanced at him before going to join the pair by the windows, when Arthur looked down he’d crumpled his notes in his hand.

***  
Later, when they’d all gone their separate ways for the evening he looped around after making his excuses to Eames and Yusuf and followed her to her flat, silently stalking her from the shadows and dragging her into the alley before she got to her stairs. She made a startled sound that caught him in the gut with a punch of lust and something darker as she struggled against his kiss until she realized it was him and melted into him with a soft sound of surrender.

Arthur knew that Cobb was still in love with Mal, probably a part of him always would be if his subconscious was an indication, but the image of the two of them standing close together as they worked still burned and since Dom was beyond his reach the lesson would be hers to learn.

He’d convinced himself that she’d come back for the experience, for the pure creation not for Dom who was obviously damaged. It made women want to fix him even though everyone knew there was no way to fix what was broken in his friend; it made him attractive and calm collected Arthur was nearly wild to remind her that she was his.

“No secrets,” he made her promise, fingers caressing her throat, her lips and she could only nod breathlessly. “I need to know everything about you.”

It was his job after all, his refuge had always been information and he was the best at what he did but she remained an enigma that he couldn’t quite grasp. She didn’t protest when he pulled at the buttons on her pants and slipped his hand inside, teeth grazing her pulse holding her immobile against him with one arm like banded steel around her back.

“I hate that you’re always wearing pants,” he growled against her skin, roughly working slender fingers into the crush of fabric to find her wet and ready. For him. “I’m going to get you into a skirt one of these days.”

She moaned, lifting one leg over his hip and laughed huskily the violence of his response flipping her switch the same way the inherent wildness of unstructured dreamscape did. It made her want to dig her hands in and peel back the layers until she reached his core.

“In your dreams.”

***  
The insides of her thighs are raw, and she wonders if anyone can tell by the way she crosses her legs.

If they paid close, careful attention, they might perceive a slight awkwardness, not unpleasant enough to be discomfort but they’re all focused on the task at hand as they plot out the best way to break into Fischer’s mind. She watches as the others talk about the plan, her attention divided between taking notes of the things they will need on each level, the theme and the purpose so she can decide on what they should be and watching Arthur.

His dark, cropped hair, tailored suits and the lanky length of his limbs should come together to make him look stodgy despite his age but that impression only lasts until she looks closely at his eyes. Eames wears his wild streak like a particularly fashionable leather coat but Arthur’s is hidden, a mystery even though he knows her body better than any man ever has. There is a slight edge of hunger in his eyes that burns with emotion, desolation the color of ash as though faded dreams left their shadows in him; such pretty eyes, to hold so much emotion.

She can see herself reflected in the clear blue of Arthur’s eyes and to him she is beautiful; fragile and precious in a way that she has never been to anyone before. She is his possession, his muse but she wants to be his equal the way she imagines Mal was Cobb’s, the way Arthur thinks of the other woman.

Arthur is driven by his passions as much as she always has been, but his eyes are the only indication since he keeps rigid control over himself, even in bed he is a cipher and she chafes against it. Her eyes follow Cobb who is just as much a mystery but doesn’t have the same skill at hiding things, or who no longer has the control needed to keep his secrets locked in. She’s a lot like him in that way, she’s always had trouble with control, rushing into danger and falling headlong into whatever came along next that struck her fancy it made her an uncommon sort of architect and she realizes now that it was because she was meant to do this.

Meant to be here, with these men, now.

***  
Cobb’s dreams are like being lost in an overgrown forest of his own memories. Suffocating and terrifying and exhilarating all at once. His secrets are on display, his life boxed up, levels laid out before her as she invades where she knows she shouldn’t.

She has a need to understand, not just because she’s bright and intelligent and she can tell he has secrets that may be dangerous to the rest of them, secrets that she’s met face to face; but because Mal terrifies her almost as much as she intrigues her. She has since that first day, the malevolent expression on her face as she stabbed her is one of the few things Ariadne still dreams about, but it’s the way Arthur’s features softened as he described her that made her reckless enough to intrude on Cobb’s dream. It’s an exploration Arthur has denied her even after all the nights in her bed and her intrusion is as much about Cobb’s secrets as Arthur’s.

“Do you know what it is to be a lover? Half of a whole?” Mal’s question repeated in her mind like a mantra, like the lingering memory of a dream that is fast growing hazy except for that one moment of complete clarity that lingers as you wake.

No.

She’d answered without thinking. She didn’t know what Arthur thought of her as, but she wasn’t his other half. She was a prize maybe, a line in the sand, a conquest. He’d wanted to know her, own her from the inside out and she had more than allowed it. She’d embraced it. She had expected him to be as methodical and controlled a lover as he was at everything else but he’d surprised her with his recklessness even though his single mindedness had never shocked her.

He never allowed her beneath the calm exterior except when they were in bed and she felt more and more like she’d opened herself up to a stranger and the word had slipped from her subconscious before she’d even had time to think.

For a moment when the word left her lips she’d felt a pang, and thought maybe - just maybe - the projection of the other woman had understood the brief flash of pain.

***  
The whisper of helpless rage in Arthur's eyes when they come to tell her and Cobb that Maurice Fischer is dead and he finds them together magnifies into a blazing fury striking her breathless to a point that causes her physical pain. He couldn’t feel nothing and have all that emotion in his eyes and it gives her hope but when he says nothing about it and simply acquiesces to Cobb’s instruction that she will be joining them something inside her cracks and that hope is gone.

She avoids him as they make the final preparation and she packs up now since she’ll be going with them and won’t have time to do it later.

“Why are you coming with us?” She’d expected the question but he catches her off guard now that she’d thought he wouldn’t ask, arms full of papers going to the incinerator she stumbles before finding her feet and continuing with her task. He would respect that.

“Ask Cobb,” she has her own questions, about what happens next and what he thinks they’re doing but she’s ripped away one veil today and can barely deal with what she found behind it, she doesn’t need another even if it means more to her. There will be time for that later she thinks, dumping the papers and brushing nonexistent dust from her shirt as she watches them blaze so she doesn’t have to look at him.

“I’m asking you,” he crowds her lifting her chin with firm yet impossibly gentle fingers. “No secrets Ariadne, remember?”

"Don't talk to me about secrets Arthur; you have enough of your own.” She couldn't keep the fine edge of anger from her tone, her whisper hoarse so they wouldn’t be overheard by the others on the far side of the warehouse as they all packed the things they would need once they were on the plane. “Or have you suddenly decided to open up?”

She turned on her heel without giving him a chance to respond and he reached out to stop her, fingers closing around her bicep firmly enough that she winced and tried to pull away.

“I’m done with this conversation.” She was so much smaller than him that there was no way she’d best him physically but there was mutiny in the tilt of her chin.

“Well I’m not.” He nearly growled the words, mouth crashing down on hers before she could protest in a punishing kiss. She bit him, drew blood and he swore and pushed her away so she stumbled against an abandoned table with a muffled thump. Maybe they're not yelling but it feels like they're yelling and she finds it impossible to believe that the others can’t hear them.

"You think if you lock up your emotions it will just go away? Mal will be alive and Cobb will be the man you used to know. This isn’t a dream; you can’t just change things to suit your needs."

His tone is biting and cold and like a slap across the face, "That’s none of your business."

"Fine!" she snaps, "It’s none of my business, it's not me you’re angry at so you don’t have to be angry with him. Because it's not me that stupidly fell in lov--"

"I didn't ask you to. Ever." The difference between love and desire is just a matter of degrees of something that he refuses to think about. That he could have stumbled over that line without realizing, when he’d never intended this to be more than a flirtation. More than a way to keep her safe from Cobb the way he hadn’t been able to keep Mal safe. His thoughts are occupied with Cobb, and the sudden wrenching fear that he’ll destroy her the way he destroyed Mal.

“No you didn’t,” She turns away and her voice drops so he has to strain to hear, feeling guilty for needing to know all her secrets but pleased that she feels so much for him. He’s always been incapable of saying the words himself. Is incapable of accepting gracefully, or embracing her the way he itches to. “You didn’t have to.”

But loving him isn’t going to be enough, and she knows it. It makes her irrationally angry and her fingers close on something solid and weighty and without taking a moment to think she hurls it and it shatters against the incinerator making him swear when Eames calls out.

“Need a hand love?”

"That could have hit me!" He growls barely audible, advancing on her again to cage her arms with his hands before calling out to Eames. “We’ve got it.”

"That was the point," she growls back more angry than he’s ever seen her. He doesn't know why people want to do this to each other but he can’t let go. She’s his. "You think you're so high and mighty? You're the one trying to convince yourself that I need you instead of the other way around. You get off on this and pretend that you don't. At least I know what I am." Her voice is low, pained but she isn’t backing down and it reminds him of that first day, of when she told Cobb off and stormed out of the warehouse and he’d wished in equal measure to have her back and that she never returned.

"And what am I?" he asks her, part a taunt, part a need to hear her answer.

“I don’t know.” She laughs a bitter lonely sound and kisses him, thinking again of Mal. ‘How can it not matter to you where that train will take you?’, thinking of the look on Cobb’s face when he answered and the crushing sadness of it.

Twisting free of his grip she yanked at his tie so she could mouth the line of his throat, the last time, before this is over and he walks away the way she knows in her gut he’s been planning to do since the beginning. She pulls open his belt as he pulls open her jeans and shoves everything over her hips before lifting her onto the table, it makes a muted creaking noise and it reminds them both that the others will be able to hear if they make a sound.

He slides his fingers into her, like honey in the comb and captures a soft moan with his lips.

"Oh-- oh God," her voice cracks. "Arthur." This is tacky, the rest of the team is just on the other side of a thin dividing wall, and they don’t have time for this but he doesn’t care. Her voice is a husky murmur against his ear, barely audible as he lifts her, as lithe and quick in reality as he is in dreams and slides into her to the hilt with a groan of his own.

He realizes then that he doesn’t think he can let her go.

***  
She has more questions now than she did before, she’s more uncertain as they board the plane and prepare for what they’re about to do. Pretending not to know him is harder than she thought it would be as though the unspoken connection is obvious to everyone else and suddenly she realizes that she understands what Mal was trying to say. It isn’t about equals, or secrets; it’s about need. Like some hokey tag line from a romantic comedy, it’s about finding the person who completes you and she has, but their romance has a shelf life the length of a flight to Los Angeles.

She hooks herself into the PASIV machine, cheek turning into the crisp first class pillowcase, into the dream. She curls around sleep like she's guarding something precious, her calves a cross, her wrists a wall before her eyes. By contrast he leans back in his seat, still upright, alert even in sleep or that’s the way it appears.

It’s two levels in, when things have gone wrong and he has to dream of large pristine spaces that he finally gets her in a skirt and there’s nothing he can do about it. The irony is not lost on him.

“Quick,” he says because it’s this or say screw it and haul her into one of the many hotel rooms upstairs despite needing all his wits about him to keep the dream stable. “Give me a kiss.”

She does, obediently, trusting him unquestioningly and it’s there on his lips to tell her everything she wants to know, whatever she needs to hear and beg her to stay with him in this dream where time with last forever. It’s seductive, the draw of having her to himself and all the time in the world and he suddenly sees what seduced Cobb and Mal.

“Come on,” he has to walk away before he does something he’ll regret.

***  
They all watch Cobb, greeting Miles and making his way out of the airport. The professor casts one look in Ariadne’s direction without letting recognition light his face and she marvels at how easily she can read the question there. She doesn’t nod or smile, just turns slightly so her head is inclined toward Arthur and she hopes he understands.

When she turns around again they are gone, and she hopes Cobb find the happiness he has been missing as she walks away the way she’s been trained to do and manages not to look back at Arthur once.

She makes her way to the ground transportation area without knowing where she’s going, home she supposes since she’s here and hasn’t seen her parents in what suddenly feels like forever. Saito has promised her a flight back to Paris at any time and she could apply to him for a ticket but instead she decides to rent a car and drive herself there needing the hours of solitude to sort out what happened in the last few weeks.

She is turning out of the parking lot when she sees him, sleeves rolled up, coat thrown over his shoulder and his tie loosened as he waits and she pulls up beside him unable to drive past.

“What are you waiting for Arthur?” She asks after a long moment of silence that neither of them seems able to fill.

“The girl of my dreams,” she inhales sharply and bites her lip which is signal enough for him to slide into the passenger seat and leans across to kiss her the way he wanted to in the dream.

“You want to know where we’re going?” she managed to ask against his lips and he drew back with a lopsided smile.

“It doesn’t matter,” the pause was barely a split second long and she knew what he was going to say before he said it. “We’ll be together.”  



End file.
